Bruins finish regular season with loss to Capitals

The playoff-bound Bruins, missing key players Brad Marchand and Torey Krug, were overtaken by the league-leading Capitals in their final game before the playoffs.

Mike Loftus The Patriot Ledger

In some ways, it felt very familiar.

The goalie got sick, the Bruins lost, and they had to spend some of their Saturday waiting for other teams to determine their post-season fate.

As it turns out, they'll have to wait until Sunday night to find out their first-round opponent: If the Maple Leafs get one point in their game at Columbus, the Bruins fall into the wild card slot and will face Washington in Round 1. If the Leafs lose in regulation, the Bruins finish third in the Atlantic Division and will face the Senators.

In one important way, none of that mattered. The Bruins left TD Garden after Saturday’s 3-1 loss to the Capitals knowing that, for the first time in two years, they’d be returning for playoff games.

Saturday’s post-game mood didn’t quite make that apparent, for a variety of reasons.

The Bruins, who clinched their berth and extended a winning streak to six games with Tuesday’s 4-0 victory over the Lightning, closed with losses to the Senators (2-1, in a shootout) and Capitals – two teams they knew they might meet in the first round. The B’s also lost a shot at first-round home ice, plus two defensemen, over those final two games.

Zdeno Chara believes the Bruins will get over it, and be into it, next week.

“I think that excitement and energy will ball up more,” said the Bruins’ captain.

“This team’s been through some ups and downs throughout the whole season. We created some identity, and built some resiliency.”

The Bruins didn’t show enough of either on Saturday – but then again, they weren’t really the Bruins. Scoring leader Brad Marchand missed his second (and final) game due to an NHL suspension. Defenseman Torey Krug, who sustained a right leg injury on Thursday, didn’t play. No. 1 goalie Tuukka Rask got the day off (at least, until Anton Khudobin had to call out sick after the third period). Jakob Forsbacka Karlsson, who was still a Boston University student last Saturday, played his first NHL game.

Compounding all that was the departure of rookie defenseman Brandon Carlo, Chara’s season-long partner on the Bruins’ shut-down pairing, with about seven minutes left in the first period. Carlo was taken hard into the boards from behind by Caps superstar Alex Ovechkin (no penalty called, to the Bruins’ dismay), and interim head coach Bruce Cassidy said the rookie blue-liner would have an upper body injury evaluated today.

Ultimately, the Bruins didn’t show too much against a team that has posted the NHL’s best record for the second season in a row, and also beaten the B’s nine consecutive times. (The Bruins’ official record in that stretch is 0-7-2.)

“I didn’t feel we were invested enough in most areas of the game to beat the first-place team in the NHL,” Cassidy said. “They’re a good hockey club. They don’t have a lot of weaknesses. You’ve got to be on your ‘A’ game, and we didn’t have our ‘A’ game.

“I don’t know if we were looking ahead, or it was just the opponent, or one of those days, but we needed to be better if we expected to beat them.”

The Bruins, who generated only 22 shots against Capitals No. 2 goalie Philipp Grubauer, did do an admirable job of staying within striking distance after Marcus Johansson finished a 3-on-2 to make it 1-0 after just 4:21. A pair of successful penalty kills (challenging, without Marchand and Carlo in the lineup) kept the B’s within a goal until defenseman Colin Miller – back in the lineup because of Krug’s injury – smashed a Drew Stafford rebound home with 4:47 left in the second period.

The Capitals took the game right back. Kevin Shattenkirk answered Miller’s goal just 56 later, and Justin Williams gave the Caps a two-goal lead in the final minute of the period. The Bruins only managed seven third-period shots while Rask – who famously was too sick to play last season’s finale, a 6-1 loss to the Senators that bumped the B’s from a berth – stepped in for Khudobin to make eight stops.

As they’ve done throughout Cassidy’s tenure (18-8-1), the Bruins pledged to put the loss behind them, and look ahead – even though they left the Garden uncertain of their next opponent.

“We’re through it, and it’s over,” David Backes said. “We’ve done what we could through 82 games. You can’t change anything now.”

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